by Judy Alter
Autie, by contrast, loved being in Monroe and acted as though he were still the national hero—perhaps he truly didn't realize he was not. He spent long days fishing for bass in the Raisin River. Other days he held forth in the lobby of Humphrey House, talking to the men gathered there—the one day I chanced to enter the lobby, I was heartbroken to see that group and know that my father was no longer one of them.
Autie also favored long walks through the town, with me on his arm. He was marvelous when on parade like that—always affable, always positive. "How are you?... Good to see you.... Yes, we're very glad to be back home in Monroe." So it went as he greeted people on the street, while I, a pale shadow, clung to him, smiling weakly.
"Libbie," he would say paternally when we were safely back in the house on Monroe Street, "you must be more cheerful. These good people will think you're ashamed of something. Are you?"
"Of course not," I assured him. But I kept my eyes down to avoid looking at him. In my heart I longed to be back at a frontier post. The months from June to October stretched dishearteningly before me.
Autie watched me hawkishly in Monroe. Tom was there for much of the summer, though officially assigned to the Seventh. Autie seemed to grow jealous even of his own brother, for Tom spent a great deal of time at the house on Monroe Street, and I, as always, became the surrogate mother, even though his own mother was not five miles away.
"Tom, have you had breakfast?" or "Tom, won't you eat those fresh berries that Eliza picked?"
"Libbie!" Autie would interrupt impatiently. "I'm waiting for you in the library so that I can work on my memoirs."
And why, I wondered, could he not work on his memoirs without my sitting by his side?
"You spend so much time worrying over Tom," Autie said peevishly, "one would wonder which Custer you're married to."
"Now, Autie," I would say soothingly.
Jim Christiancy, whom I'd nursed during the Civil War, was back in Monroe, still a semi-invalid from his wounds, now living with his parents. He came to call, putting one crutch aside to hold out an arm to me for a hug.
"Libbie! My God, how good it is to see you! I owe you my life! You know that, don't you, Armstrong?" he asked, turning to Autie. "I owe her my life!"
"A great debt," Autie said grimly, his eyes flashing dangerously.
"Autie," I said, "isn't it wonderful to see how well Jim looks?"
Jim shook his head. "Don't toy with me, Libbie. I'll never be a whole man again. But I'm happy as I can be under the circumstances." Then he looked at Autie. "I envy you this woman, Armstrong."
Autie just nodded grimly, and the rest of the visit went from bad to worse. I saw Jim throughout the summer from time to time, but only casually. He never felt welcome enough to return to the house, nor did I feel comfortable in asking him. I thought it a pity, for his life needed whatever brightening it could get.
The final straw came when no less a figure than General Phil Sheridan came to Monroe for a visit. He was on his way to Washington from the Indian frontier and stopped, I was sure, as a way of publicly expressing his support of Autie.
"Libbie," Little Phil said—everyone, even Autie, called him Little Phil behind his back, and I'd begun to think of him that way—"you're as beautiful as ever. Exile has not harmed you." He bent to kiss my hand.
"La, Phil," I said, trying to laugh, "it's been good to be home among friends. But Autie and I are ready to be back in the army."
"I'm sure you are," he said, looking intently at me and then gazing at Autie, who stood silently to one side. "I'm sure you are."
Autie was furious after he'd left. "You needn't be begging for me, especially not from one of your conquests."
"Autie, do be serious. Phil Sheridan is an old friend of yours, from the war days... and I was not begging. I was stating a truth."
"He's a better friend of yours," Autie countered harshly, "ever since you and he rode that train together."
My mind flitted back to that train ride to Washington with Sheridan—it seemed a lifetime ago—when I had been young and green and overwhelmed by generals. "Yes," I said softly, "he is an old friend of mine, too."
"I have to watch you with every pair of army pants that happens along," Autie said with venom.
Stung, I stared at him, unbelieving. Autie was accusing me of infidelity... or as good as. It was as though he'd exaggerated his fears about James Coker a thousandfold. "Autie?" I managed to whisper. "Do you believe I've been unfaithful to you?"
He turned red, that famous Custer blush revealing his discomfort. "No," he muttered, "not exactly."
"Then why?" I demanded. "Why are you so suspicious of every little thing I do? You've even questioned my relationship with Tom this summer.... Perhaps you protest too much, as the saying goes." A sudden light was going on in my head.
"Libbie, what are you talking about?" he demanded, ill at ease.
"Perhaps you suspect me of infidelity because you yourself have been guilty," I said.
"Libbie, for heaven's sake..."
"All those trips to New York and Washington without me," I went on, now riding the crest of my anger and indignation, "all those times you wrote me about how the women fawned over you and you resisted. Maybe that was what you wanted me to believe...."
"Libbie..." His voice had a note of desperation in it.
"And Kansas City," my monologue went on, almost musing, as though I'd not even heard him, "...I remember a night when you came in late, very late, and you smelled to high heaven of French perfume.... You told me that you'd had to fight off a society lady, and we both laughed about it." I paused. "Maybe I shouldn't have laughed, Autie."
I stared at him, my eyes wide with my new but very certain knowledge.
"Libbie, don't be silly. I love you, only you."
"Oh, I don't doubt that, Autie. But that has nothing to do with your being faithful. I know your appetites."
He had the poor taste to look almost proud, and I turned away in disgust. For days, unable to go near him, I slept in the guest room. Mama had long since occupied my old bedroom on her visits back to the house, and Autie and I shared my father's bedroom—the room in which he and my stepmother had slept. Sometimes I had felt uncomfortable about making love to Autie in that same room. Now I just felt uncomfortable about Autie.
"Libbie," he asked plaintively after five days, "aren't you ever coming back to my bed?"
"Perhaps," I said unconvincingly.
It was two weeks before I returned to his bed, and my ardor never returned all that long summer. Waiting for October and our reprieve, we were testy with each other, always ready for a disagreement. Sometimes I found myself provoking arguments.
"You really want a son, don't you, Autie?" I asked one night as we sat, some distance apart, in uncomfortable old wooden chairs set upon the grass behind the house.
He chewed on the stem of grass he had plucked and looked beyond me, as though he could see clear to the West. After a long pause he said, "No, Libbie, I don't think I do. That has been a big problem for me... and for you... but I think I've got a grip on it. The truth is, there's no place in our lives for children. If you had to tend to youngsters, you could not be with me on the plains—and I prefer that."
"But family is so important to you," I protested. I missed children, even wanted them, but I had long since decided I really wanted them mostly to please Autie, mostly because I thought he was unhappy without them. Now I wanted to push that point to its limits.
He brightened, as though I'd suggested a wonderful solution. "I've thought perhaps we could adopt Autie Reed."
"Autie Reed!" I exploded. "Your ten-year-old nephew? And what does his mother say about that?"
"Well," he admitted reluctantly, "I thought it best to discuss it with you first. I haven't talked to her."
"I wouldn't, if I were you," I said to Autie, and the subject was dropped. But gradually Autie did convince me that our childlessness was not at the root of our unhappiness.
But we never, that long summer, dug out that root. I used to catch Eliza staring at us, as though she could shake both of us, and I thought she knew more about us than we did ourselves.
* * *
As it turned out, we did not have to wait until October. Autie's rescue came early in September, with a knock on the door.
"Message for the general," the young boy said, holding a telegraph in his hand.
"I'll take it," I replied, but he pulled back the hand holding the paper.
"I'm to wait for a reply, Miz Custer," he said apologetically.
"Of course. Come in." My mind whirled, for I knew without ever looking at that message that Autie was returning to the army. It could be nothing else. Was I losing him or was a bitter, unhappy summer coming to an end? I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry.
"Autie?" There was a tremor in my voice, I was sure. "There's a wire for you."
He was at the door in an instant, tearing open the message. His eyes widened as he read, then a grin spread across his face while I stood nearby, my breath held tight.
"Let me read it," he said. "It's from Phil. Says, 'Generals Sherman, Sully, and myself, and nearly all the officers of your regiment, have asked for you, and I hope the application will be successful. Can you come at once? Eleven companies of your regiment will move about the first of October against the hostile Indians.' Libbie," he said, grabbing me and whirling me around as in the old, happier days, "they need me!"
"You'll go?" I asked softly.
"Of course. I'll go tomorrow." Then he paused to look at me. "Don't look so downcast, old lady. Isn't this what you've wanted all summer, too?"
He forgot the young boy standing there, forgot my stepmother and Tom Custer seated within earshot at the dining table, forgot Eliza hovering at the swinging door into the kitchen. "I swear to God," he said forcefully, "I don't know how to make you happy."
I hung my head, feeling very much the fool but for some reason unable to control the emotions that rose to the surface. Indeed, I was unable to puzzle them out myself. "I suppose I'm to stay here?" I, who had spent half the summer avoiding Autie, was now, suddenly, desperate to be with him.
"And could you be ready to go tomorrow?" he asked sarcastically, and then softened instantly. "It won't be for long. I'll be on march right away... but we'll be together again soon."
Neither he nor I had any way of knowing that "soon" would stretch far beyond the Christmas holidays.
Autie's summons to duty came on the heels of a turbulent summer on the western plains. In July there had been the Medicine Lodge Council, a triumph of peacemaking, so the Michigan newspapers told us. But Al Barnitz, a captain with one of the Seventh Cavalry companies, had written Autie that the Cheyenne had agreed to the treaty without any idea or understanding of what they were giving up. "The treaty amounts to nothing, and we will certainly have another war soon or later," he wrote.
Then, as though fulfilling Captain Barnitz's prophecy, came the Battle of Beecher's Island, where scouts, under Major George A. Forsyth, were pinned down for a week on an island in the dry bed of the Arikara Fork of the Republican River in Kansas. They were finally rescued by buffalo soldiers from the Tenth, but their plight enraged the army. Easterners, who read of it in newspapers and knew neither the drama nor the intensity, still thought that a peaceable solution was possible.
But Autie knew better. And he had told his views to the old men gathered in the Humphrey House lobby, who nodded sagely and thought he was wonderful. Now he was off to prove that he was right.
"Libbie, you will help me pack?" He looked the little boy, lost as he stood among his bags and clothes.
"Of course I'll help you," I said, moving to fold the pile of pants he had thrown on the floor, a blue carpet of cavalry uniforms sparked by an occasional red bandanna—he still considered those bandannas his trademark—and punctuated by a lone sock here or undershirt there. I began the task of organizing at which I was, by now, very proficient.
"Old lady, look at me," he said.
I noted without comment that he had twice called me "old lady" that night, a term of affection that he had not used for some time.
When I turned toward him, he folded me in his arms and said fiercely, "I need a victory, Libbie. I need a victory."
The next day I was the bright and cheerful army wife at the rail station in Monroe, kissing my husband good-bye and waving long after the train had become a speck in the distance. But as I turned back toward Monroe Street, Eliza and Mama both at my side, I carried with me an indelible picture of the intense look Autie had given me as he boarded the train.
He was, of course, off to fight Indians. There was no denying the danger, in spite of Custer's Luck. What if I'd sent him off to his death without truly smoothing the differences between us? When all the house was quiet that night, I lay sobbing into my pillow in Papa's bed, reaching in vain for the spot where Autie should be.
Victory
and
Defeat
Chapter 13
Autie got his victory at Washita, and I was with him. Oh, not really. Even Autie wouldn't have taken me into battle. But his letters were so vivid that I lived that battle with him—after the fact, of course.
In reality, the first part of that fall of 1868 I was fuming in Monroe—bored, lonely, and angry. All that long summer we had been distant with each other, uncomfortable, my anger at his accusations still high, my belief that he had dallied with other women too strong to ignore. But once really separated from him, I was desperate to be with him. I could not explain my feelings then and cannot now.
And I was sick to death of Monroe—with Mama now living back there, full of her aches and pains, even the Ousters, sweet and kind as they were. Father Custer jollied me into good spirits whenever he could, and Mother Custer fussed over me in her quiet way. But I longed for the company of men who called me "old lady" and laughed at my fears, danced with me far into the night and loved me because I was fun. I missed the army... and I missed Autie. Sometimes his letters sent me into gales of laughter, like the time poor Tom needed a change of clothes:
His dog, Brandy, tangled with a polecat, and Tom, in rushing to pull him off, got enough perfume to last him several months. This is not exactly the country to allow a man parting with his clothes, as he can't very well go back several hundred miles to replace them. Tom partially turned the joke, concluding to call on all the other officers in camp while so highly, if not fashionably, perfumed. He would enter a tent, and soon the remark would arise, "Some dog has been killing a skunk. I wonder where the damn brute is!" Someone else would say, "It's evidently close about here, you can bet!" So the conversation would go until Tom could contain his laughter no longer and thus betrayed his awful secret.
Another time, more seriously, he wrote that Fort Dodge was a terrible place, where most of the officers had laundresses for mistresses, and some quickly became drunkards. He knew of one officer, he wrote, who took to drink because he suspected his wife of infidelity:
From the excellent officer that he was, he has descended to one of the most inefficient. Poor man, I am deeply sorry for him and cannot censure him. I would do no better if as well were I in his place... How blessed I am that I am united to a pure, virtuous, and devoted wife and I feel immeasurably thankful for it.
James Coker, I thought, get thee behind me! But I knew that Autie's letter held hidden barbs beneath its sugary words.
More often his letters moved me to fear rather than laughter or anger. In October he wrote,
We have been on the warpath but one week. I joined the regiment near our present camp a week since, and within two hours the Indians attacked.
You would never ask to go to a circus after seeing Indians ride and perform in a fight. I took my rifle and went out on the line, hoping to obtain a good shot, but it was like shooting swallows on the wing, so rapid were they in their movements.... Sometimes a warrior, all feathered and painted, in order to show his bravery to his comrades, started alone on
his pony, and with the speed of a quarter horse would dash along the entire length of my line, and even within three or four hundred yards of it, my men pouring in their rifle balls by hundreds, yet none bringing down the game. I could see the bullets knock up the dust around and beneath his pony's feet, but none apparently striking him.
My heart leapt in terror when I thought of Autie actually facing Indians—though what else, I wondered, did I expect? A few days later he wrote,
Sherman has finally decided on a winter campaign. We are going to the heart of Indian country, where the troops have never been before. The Indians have grown up in the belief that the soldiers cannot and dare not follow them there. They are now convinced that all the tribes that have been committing depredations on the plains in the past season have gone south and are near each other in the vicinity of the Washita Mountains. They will doubtless combine against us.
"Eliza! Eliza!" My frantic voice echoed through the house on Monroe Street.
"What is it, Miss Libbie? I'se right here. You don't need to go yellin' so." She poked her head out of the kitchen, curiosity and concern written on her face.
"The general!" I gasped, breathless as though I'd run a mile. "We must go to the general."
"Now, Miss Libbie," she said patiently. "He's off fightin' them Indians, and you know we can't go to him. We got to stay here until he sends for us. Miss Libbie, you come and let me fix a good cup of tea."
"No!" I said frantically. "We've got to go..." I turned and began to mount the stairs.
"Go where?"
"To Leavenworth," I said desperately. "At least we'll be closer to him."
"Not much," she muttered, as she watched me pull clothes out of the wardrobe like a madwoman.
When Autie fought in the Civil War, I used to think superstitiously that I had to wish him luck each time he left me. If I didn't, he would be injured... or killed. Now that feeling came back, though different. It wasn't that I had to wish him luck, but I had to be close, I had to be on the frontier as though, somehow, I could spread my wings and shelter him. Autie would have laughed and called me "old lady" if he could have read my mind.
